Re-creating a lead legend

That familiar form of wood-encased graphite, with a bit of rubber, metal and paint, has been around for perhaps 300 years.

Big-box retailers sell a dozen store-branded pencils for $1.50 a dozen or less. Even familiar brand names might go for only twice as much.

Now imagine a pencil so prized for its ability to lay down a dark, smooth line that it ignites passion among collectors and dedicated users, such as artists, illustrators, architects and writers; and so rare in supply that bidders are willing to pay $20, $30 or even more on Internet auction sites for a single unsharpened stick.

That's the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602, a hexagonal, black-painted pencil with a rectangular, removable eraser. But it has been out of production since 1998.

Hoping to build on its mystique, California Cedar Products Co. in Stockton has introduced the Palomino Blackwing, a soft-lead, rectangular-eraser pencil modeled after the Eberhard Faber original.

Cal Cedar is offering the new Blackwing through its subsidiary California Republic Stationers' online site pencils.com for $20 per dozen.

Pencil lovers have responded.

Doug Martin, an officer of the American Pencil Collectors Society who wrote a detailed history of the Blackwing 602 at his blog, pencilpages.com, bought a box of the Cal Cedar version soon after it became available.

"Aficionados have hoped for a comeback since the late 1990s, and for the last decade, Blackwing prices have reached beyond $35 per pencil - for an item that originally cost about $1 each," he wrote in an e-mail.

"As a collector, I have yet to bring myself to sharpen one and try it out," he confessed. However, he added, "Cal Cedar products are of high quality, and I'm sure they have put every bit as much quality they can into this product."

Cal Cedar's main line of business, really, is in providing large quantities of wooden pencil slats - produced in China since 2002 - as raw materials to major pencil manufacturers. His family also owns the separate Duraflame fire log business.

In the past several years, it also developed its own line of pencils, including brands such as California Republic, ForestChoice, Golden Bear and Palomino. The main idea is to demonstrate Cal Cedar's ability to provide a range of products to its commercial customers.

"You can buy our wood slats, you can buy our raw pencils, you can buy a packaged pencil or you can buy a fully finished product," he said.

But to his surprise, those limited-distribution products began to generate demand of their own.

He credits the blogger behind the website pencilrevolutions.com, identified online only as John G., with sparking that interest.

In about 2005, he recalled hearing from John G. and agreeing to send along some ForestChoice models, environmentally friendly pencils, for review.

"We started getting orders," Berolzheimer recalled.

He also sent the blogger some Palomino brand samples, initially not sold domestically.

John G. loved the pencils, but he only reviews pencils easily available.

So Berolzheimer built a sales portal on eBay.com.

As a result, he said, "The Palomino just found a little niche among people who like high-quality, smooth-writing pencils."

Cal Cedar's Pencils.com, which launched in the mid-1990s as a strictly educational/promotional website, became a retail portal for its pencil brands in 2008.

A redesigned Pencils.com was launched last month along with the new Blackwing, which was originally going to be called the Palomino Pegasus until Berolzheimer learned the famed pencil trademark had lapsed and thought it would be a good way to build some buzz.

"It was a great brand name; it was well-loved. ... I claimed an abandoned brand," he said.

The new pencil is produced in Japan, where Berolzheimer worked with various suppliers, using the original Blackwing 602 as a model.

Cal Cedar even paid to create the tooling used to produce the pencil's unique rectangular eraser.

"It's based on the same design," he said. "Our eraser is a little bigger than the original."

It's also white, not pink. Other cosmetics, the paint color and accent designs, also make it no carbon copy.

So how do picky pencil people like the new Blackwing?

In his review of a pre-production version of the pencil, pencilrevolution.com editor John G. wrote:

"(W)hat the new Blackwing amounts to is a fantastic modern pencil under the Palomino line, with a nod to the legend that was the Blackwing 602. In same (sic) ways, it could never be the original. Any new Blackwing would not be made by the same company, not be made in the USA ... , would probably have a better eraser and more environmentally friendly paint than the old pink-topped 602 model.

"I have to tell you: from the preview we have been lucky enough to experience, I think it can stand on its own, apart from either name stamped onto the side in gold letters."